Hey there, my favorite Pen Pal (Keyboard Pal?)!

We got Crashlands 2 out the door a week ago, so it's time for an update on how that went and what comes next.


The game really exploded out of the gate, climbing to the top of nearly every chart. We hit a peak concurrency of 8500 players, with 1000 reviews, all just on Steam! For a moment there we were even ahead of the mega-hit Blue Prince (a huge congrats to that team for their stellar launch).

Things went fairly smoothly, with only one significant bug falling through the cracks (which we got fixed up a day after launch). Well, and also on Saturday morning our servers totally fell over. I was looking around like, "Who let this happen!?" and then remembered that I'm the only web developer on the team. WHOOPS. That's on me.

Otherwise we've just been handling an absolute flood of feedback, trying to sort out bugs versus suggestions versus people just being confused. While the overall response has been very positive, we have seen a bunch of totally valid critiques. So we've planned out our roadmap for the first two major patches to address a bunch of those. We don't have an ETA, but it'll be a matter of weeks instead of months.


Now, the most fun bit: for the next three weeks (depending on when you read this), and the next two weeks only, you can get your very own (and first ever) Flux + Juicebox (+ Wrenchy) cuddly plushie!

https://www.makeship.com/products/flux-juicebox-plushie

I don't even have one of these myself yet because we only got one prototype to share amongst the team, and that, of course, had to go to my niece. So you better believe I'll be first in line, and no HUMAN CHILD will take it from me! Unless that child is willing to DUEL. I'm a man of principles, after all.

It's one of those enough-people-have-to-order-it-or-it-doesn't-happen things, though. So if you don't get one I might not get one either. And then we'll both be sad.

If all goes well, maybe I can convince the team to let us do a Sluggabun plushie next. I want one SO BAD. If you think something else would be a better next plushie, come fight me in the Discord 🥊🥊.


If you’ve got Crashlands 2 on the brain and you’re looking for some like-minded people, the Discord has been absolutely poppin' — people helping each other out, sharing strategies, and showing off some incredibly elaborate home bases (like the tiny corner of BowNilver's base in the screenshot below). It really warms my heart to see so many people excited about this game we made.

https://i.imgur.com/9pq7whc.jpg

Thanks to all of you for making this first week a success!

💖,

Adam Coster

Webslinger @Butterscotch Shenanigans

I've been waiting to say this for FOUR HUNDRED YEARS:


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1401730/

Cue the air horns! Release the doves! Fire the cannons! (But not at the doves!)

What a journey it's been. The original Crashlands came out in 2016 (9 years ago!), and we've spent nearly the last 5 years working on the sequel. We've put all of our blood (ow!), sweat (ew!), and tears (dew!) into this thing, and I'm incredibly proud of what we've made with our tiny little team of desiccated husks. I hope you love it as much as we do!

We've already got some great early reviews and previews. I'll just plop my favorites here:

• Vice calls it "a Crafting/Survival Masterclass" in a review that’s so glowing it made me blush!
  
• Hardcore Gamer calls it "a crazy-fun adventure featuring a pair of ridiculously likable characters, set in a world that's usually bursting with humor but is smart enough to know when to take itself seriously"
  
• Wanderbots posted a charming preview video of the first hour of gameplay

We already knew we made something good, but it’s still a huge relief to hear other people agree!

Crashlands 2 is a direct sequel to the original. So if you liked that one and want to pick up where you left of with Flux and Juicebox, you should definitely check it out. But also if you found the original to be a little rough around the edges, the sequel "Improves on the Original Game in Every Conceivable Way" (oh hey, that's Vice again!).

Thank you so much for all of the love that original Crashlands got. It's what allowed us to the time to make a sequel deserving of the title.

Happy gaming!

💖,

Adam Coster
Webslinger @Butterscotch Shenanigans

Oh hey there, youngster!

People say that time moves faster and faster as you age. My last Ballyhoo marked 4 weeks to the Crashlands 2 launch, and I was so excited about how close that was. The blink of an eye! But 4 weeks was still an eternity for the youths, who only rolled their eyes and yelled, "That might as well be next century, old man!" as they vaped off into the sunset.

But now we're only 2 weeks away, which is truly Soon™ no matter how old you are! I think?

As the launch approaches, I've been feeling rather nostalgic about the original Crashlands and how far we've come with Crashlands 2. So this issue of the Ballyhoo is a little journey down memory lane.




Back in 2016 my two brothers and I launched the original Crashlands. It was our first game that paid any bills and is still the game we're best known for all these years later. It's been played by literally millions of people, which is both amazing and terrifying. Making Crashlands was a harrowing experience (there's a whole documentary about it), and honestly I'm still amazed we pulled it off!

(If you never played the original, or just want a refresher, someone did a delightfully-narrated 100% playthrough video edited down to a mere 2 hours!)

The success of Crashlands gave us all kinds of cool opportunities. From giving talks at the Game Developers Conference, to getting a tour of the Nintendo of America HQ, to being nominated for GOTY awards alongside juggernauts like Pokemon Go and Clash Royale.


We were super proud of what we'd made with the original game, but we were also quite aware that it wasn't the game we wished we could make. We'd only been making games for a couple of years when we started working on Crashlands, and we frankly didn't have the experience to make the game we imagined.

So we spent a few years retooling our studio, skilling up, expanding our team, and learning through launching another game (Levelhead). And then it was time to tackle Crashlands again, this time to make exactly the game we'd always wanted Crashlands to be. It still took a few years of research & development to become possible, and then another few years to finish the thing, but we did it!

You can get a sense of just how far we've come between the original and the sequel from some of the videos we put together over the past year:

- The release date announcement trailer shows off the benefits of changing from a procedural world to a hand-built one.
- Base-building probably has the most dramatic upgrade in Crashlands 2. Walls are tall! And buildings have roofs!
- Combat got the biggest experience upgrade. We made sure there's room for more casual play (my own preference) but the ceiling for just how interesting things can get is now a lot higher!
- Pets got more interesting, too!


Crashlands 2 is almost here, and the best thing you can do to support the game right now is to wishlist it ahead of time on your favorite platforms to let the stores know that they should be featuring it!

That's it for this Ballyhoo! As always, you can stay up to date with how things are going by listening to our podcast and hanging out in our Discord.

💖,

Adam Coster
Webslinger @Butterscotch Getoffmylawnigans

Crashlands 2 comes out on April 10, which is merely 3 weeks away. I want to take a moment from the million wrap-up tasks we have left to give you an update. The most important update is that we're on track for our release date and don't expect any delays!


We'd filtered 900 applicants down to 100 testers, and gave them three weeks to play as much as they could. Three weeks isn't very long for a game of this size but our intrepid testers put in an impressive effort, and a surprising number made it all the way to the end!

We got so much great feedback, and we used it to make tons of fixes and improvements. Some fun stats from the beta:

• 100 testers
  
• 360 Pets Hatched
  
• 470 Pet Embiggenings
  
• 3,900 Player "Deaths"
  
• 45,600 Consumables Consumed
  
• 86,800 Items Crafted
  
  
• 2,045 Total hours played
  
  • 20 Hour Average Playtime
    
  • 95 Hour Top Playtime (that's 30 hours per week!)
• How far did people get? (Note that these times are biased towards the fastest players)
  
  • 50% Completed Act 1, taking a median of 14 hours (ranging 8-40 hours)
    
  • 30% Completed Act 2, taking a median of 31 hours (ranging 20-62 hours)
    
  • 20% Completed the game, taking a median of 41 hours (ranging 28-88 hours)
• How well did it go on each platform?
  • People beat the game on PC, Steam Deck, Android, and iOS!
    
  • We had a lot of testing time on every platform
    
  • Rumpus worked perfectly to sync people's saves across devices and platforms
    
  • We had a lot of performance issues on mobile at the start of the beta, but by the end the game was playing well on nearly everyone's mobile devices

We're now at the "String Lock" phase of development, which is the fancy gamedev way of saying, "The text (a.k.a. strings) are not allowed to change anymore."

This is a super important milestone for a game, because translation always lags behind the text. Games always have to go into String Lock a fair bit before launch to make sure translators have enough time. And Crashlands 2 has 148,500 words (!) so there's a lot to translate!


While the game is now "done" except for those last bits of translation, there's still a lot of other stuff to do.

On the game side, most of our time is going into performance boosts, minor bugfixes, and small quality of life improvements. We won't make any major changes because everything in the game interacts with everything else, so each change we make requires a LOT of testing. So that's the other thing we'll be doing until launch: an absolutely bonkers amount of testing!

But game launches require a lot more than just having a complete game. We have to coordinate all kinds of marketing activities, shore up all of our store pages, make plans with business partners, and take care of a billion odds and ends.


And with that I'll leave you until launch, unless I can squeeze in another Ballyhoo in a couple of weeks. I'm SO EXCITED to get this game into your hands after these looooong 4.5 years of development! As always, you can stay up to date with how things are going by listening to our podcast and hanging out in our Discord.

💖,

Adam Coster
Webslinger @Buticanfeelit Shenaningintheairtonight

We finally did it! Crashlands 2 has a release date: April 10 at 10AM PT / 5PM UTC

And that means it's time for some REVEALS, via a shiny new trailer. We've kept stuff super secret during the past, uh, 4.5 years of development, since everything was changing all the time. But NO MORE! Gaze upon our secrets!



One last thing: we'll be running a closed beta test to catch any final issues shortly before launch. If you want to join our limited pool of beta testers, throw your hat in the ring by filling out this form.

Okay, now off we go to do the ONE TRILLION remaining things to get this game wrapped up!

💖 Gettin' Those Packages Delivered,

The Bscotch Team

Hello, fellow time traveler!

The new year is nigh, so it's time for me to pop my head up, blink a few times, then ask, "... what... year... is it?" and try to figure out what's happened since 2023.

A lot, it turns out!


https://i.imgur.com/S9F0ZFd.jpg

The biggest thing for 2024 was, of course, Crashlands 2 becoming nearly complete. Back when we announced the game in 2023 we thought we'd have it done by the end of this year. We were optimistic on that front, but not for lack of trying! To give you an idea of just how hard we've been working over the past year:

• 🎨 We added 700 new art assets to the game, consisting of 2200 parts (animated elements, animation frames, variants, etc). We had to add a whole new artist to the team to make this happen!
  
• 📚 We added 80,000 words to the game's text (quests, item descriptions, etc), bringing the total to 130,000. That's like... two novels? 100,000 words have been translated so far, thanks to the work of dozens of translators and editors.
  
• 🧸 We added 3,100 new assets (items, resources, characters, quest nodes, etc).
  
• 🌐 We updated the World Map 2,300 times and the asset database 2,200 times.
  
• 🧑‍💻 We added 18,000 lines of code.
  
• 📦 We built and tested 333 versions of the game. Since we have separate builds for each platform (Windows, iOS, and Android), that's a total of 999 builds!

That's a lot! Especially with our tiny content team (2 artists, 1 game programmer, 1 writer). And even more so given that our team also added 👶two more entire humans👶 to the mix! (Welcome to the world, Ruby and Jack!)

But hey, we're still on track for a Q1 2025 release and we'll be making the official release date announcement Soon™!


Some cool things happened for the original Crashlands in 2024, too:

• We sold more copies this year than in the past several years combined, thanks to excitement around Crashlands 2 and to some very aggressive discounting.
  
• Floydson did a complete playthrough of Crashlands. It's amazing to see the entire game compressed down to 2.5 hours and the commentary is hilarious.

Levelhead's community is still making levels and doing cool stuff:

• Our first time in Games Done Quick! IllegallySam beat the campaign in 46 minutes, which is wild considering I still haven't even beat the game at all...
  
• Players published 13,000 new levels, 2,000 of which graduated into the Tower.
  
• Player FlowArt takes the lead for most-played levels: 250 days of playtime accumulated from 2.5 million plays!
  
• Player Cire takes the record for most published levels (884), and also has the most levels in the Tower this year (229). Player Sabre is just behind on total levels.
  
• Player Lommuck Fangiant leads in Ribbons with a staggering total of nearly 18,000! Enough to make me suspicious... In second place we have BeneficialExcellence with over 6,900.
  
• Player JuiceBox has the lead in Shoes (9,600+), followed by Cire in second place with 8,607.

Next up is getting Crashlands 2's release date announced, and then getting the dang thing finally done. We're tired, but still so excited because we absolutely cannot wait to get it into your hands. We've poured our hearts, souls, time, blood, sweat, tears, and everything else we have into this game, and we'll be sharing it with you soon!


With that, it's time to close out this edition of the Bscotch Ballyhoo. Until next time, go wishlist Crashlands 2 on Steam, if you haven't already!

Oh, and our 500th podcast episode (!) comes out on January 1st, 2025! Did we plan that? Nope! Wait, I meant YES DEFINITELY we're super good at planning...

💖 Your Spacetime Anomaly,

Adam Coster

Webslinger @ Bufferedvideo Stillloadingans

P.S. Bscotch is now on Bluesky since that site's really popping off. Sam and myself are on there, too. We'll post little previews, videos, behind-the-scenes commentary, blah blah blah over there now and then, so check us out!

Hey there, fellow adventurer!


Welcome to the latest edition of the Bscotch Ballyhoo Newsletter. This time it's all about the cozier side of Crashlands 2, plus an update to our release window.

Let's get into it.

---

While Crashlands is an action-adventure game at its core, it has all kinds of cozy/wholesome elements: pets, farming, fishing, home-building & decor, and a delightfully weird cast of characters to befriend.



In the sequel, we wanted to let players relax more deeply into the cozy side of the game, so we made all of those features more satisfying so that you can really lean into them. And we've got a new trailer to let you experience that vibe right now!

Yeah, there's still a lot of combat in Crashlands 2. But we've also expanded the combat styles so that you can stay a bit more removed from the action if that's your jam:

• Story Mode: Play on the lowest difficulty setting so that you can focus on the story and the cozy elements of the game with less combat stress.
• Environmental Mastery: The world is super dynamic, and you can use this to avoid direct combat by leading enemies into environmental hazards and tricking them into fighting each other.
• Sneaky Little Sneak: By turning yourself invisible, buffing your speed, using distance weapons and traps, letting your pet help you out, and other tricks, you can keep yourself quite out of harm's way.

---

Since a lot of the coziness of Crashlands 2 comes from the homestead you build for yourself (and your new friends!), we've put together another Ballyhoo Video to go with the cozy trailer. It's about how base-building works in Crashlands 2. Give it a watch: you'll see that things have come a long way since the original!

---

Alright, let's rip the bandage off: Crashlands 2 will not be launching in 2024 like we planned.

When we announced the game in June 2023 we thought that "2024" was a wide enough, far-away-enough target that it was a safe timeline. Turns out it wasn't, but we were only off by a little bit: we'll be launching Crashlands 2 very early in 2025.


So at least it's a small delay. But why delay at all?

The short answer is that it's not really a delay, but a miscalculation. All timelines are just guesses, and we guessed wrong. The longer answer is that games have 3 levels of being "done", and we can't quite get Crashlands 2 through all three by the end of the year.

1. Content-Complete: Everything we intend to be in the game is in there, in its finished state, and fully tested by our team.
2. Player-Feedback-Adjusted: The Content-Complete game has been played by a bunch of people outside of our team and we've used their feedback to fix balance issues, make confusing stuff clear, and fix any bugs we missed. (We'll be enlisting a few dozen volunteers from the community for this; if you want to be involved in that, keep an eye on our Discord!)
3. Launch-Ready: We've passed all checks from our publishing and store partners, the text has been fully translated into all target languages and checked for errors, and we have the green light to launch from everyone involved.

We'll be through the Content-Complete phase and will have made a lot of progress on the other two by the end of this year. The winter holidays and New Year throw a wrench into things, but it'll all get finished up pretty quickly in the new year!


And with that, it's time to close out this edition of the Bscotch Ballyhoo. Until next time, go wishlist Crashlands 2 on Steam if you haven't already!

💖 Your Freshly Baked Cookies,

Adam Coster
Webslinger @ Buttersnuggle Shenapigans

P.S. I've made those launch-delay panels available as a meme template, ready for your silly goofs!

Grab a copy at the steepest discount in Crashlands' history - the Steam Daily Deal is LIVE TODAY.



Crashlands sequel is brewing, and there's no better time to dive into the original experience. Familiarize yourself with its unique universe, and be ready to jump into the next chapter. Don't forget to wishlist Crashlands 2 so you won't miss out!

In case you need assistance figuring out a puzzle, conquering a boss, or accomplishing a quest, our vibrant discord community is here for you.

GET READY to embark on an unforgettable journey in Crashlands 2, where friendship and interstellar chaos collide!



Return to planet Woanope as Flux Dabes, the intergalactic trucker, and disgruntled corporate employee. Befriend eccentric aliens, craft bizarre weaponry, and stick it to the man in a vibrant world where friendship is the key to your survival.

Crashlands 2 is set to launch on Steam in 2024, and will simultaneously be coming to mobile exclusively via Netflix. Stay tuned for updates, wishlist Crashlands 2 on Steam, and join our Discord community for more interstellar fun.

GET READY to embark on an unforgettable journey in Crashlands 2, where friendship and interstellar chaos collide!



Return to planet Woanope as Flux Dabes, the intergalactic trucker, and disgruntled corporate employee. Befriend eccentric aliens, craft bizarre weaponry, and stick it to the man in a vibrant world where friendship is the key to your survival.

Crashlands 2 is set to launch on Steam in 2024, and will simultaneously be coming to mobile exclusively via Netflix. Stay tuned for updates, wishlist Crashlands 2 on Steam, and join our Discord community for more interstellar fun.